Fiber-modified recombinant adenoviral constructs encoding hepatitis C virus proteins induce potent HCV-specific T cell response

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV)-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) play an important role in HCV clearance. The frequency of HCV-specific TCD8 in peripheral blood of HCV-infected donors is very low and HCV cannot be cultivated for reinfection of antigen presenting cells, making it difficult to detect TCD8 of broad HCV specificities from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). We have developed a recombinant adenoviral system that efficiently reactivates and expands HCV-specific CTLs from PBMCs of HCV-infected donors. Replication-incompetent adenoviruses expressing individual HCV proteins (core and NS3) were produced and PBMCs from HCV-infected donors were transduced with these recombinant a..